Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

The National Ice Task force is set to report soon, after months of examining the scourge of ice in Australia—and what a scourge it is. How many thousands of families has it destroyed? How many families has it ripped apart? How many individuals has it hurt? And how many have been hurt by those who have a problem with ice? The task force has received more than 1,300 submissions, including one from me; spoken to experts and stakeholders; and will, by the end of the year, produce a National Ice Action Strategy.

A key initiative from the strategy has to be a significant boost to voluntary rehabilitation services around the nation and in regional and rural areas. I have seen constituent after constituent who have told me stories of how a family member has been devastated by ice and cannot get into a treatment program, cannot get the help they need. Just recently a friend of mine had a family member who could not get the necessary help through government agencies, and this family had to spend in the order of $25,000 for a health program—which appears to have been very effective. But why should families have to mortgage their homes, cash in their super, take out loans, in order to get help that we as a community ought to be able to make available? Funding has to be stepped up and locked in. We cannot have the seesaw approach we saw in 2014 when the federal government cut funding to the non-government health sector by $600 million over three years, only to reinstate funding to drug and alcohol rehabilitation services on an annual basis later that year.

But I believe that in addition to significantly boosting voluntary rehabilitation—which will help many lives—we need to go further. Tonight I want to take a close, forensic look at something that has so far been considered too hard in Australia but which we must introduce as part of our national response to ice; namely, mandatory rehabilitation for adolescents and adults who have been affected by ice and other serious drugs and substances. It has been a success in Sweden, which has dedicated programs for both young people and adults, and I will be speaking shortly about an eye-opening report by the very experienced and respected Australian magistrate Jennifer Bowles into the Swedish program for young people. We have to look at tougher policies—and I do not mean tough in a punitive way but policies that are compassionate and fair but also effective—because ice is taking this country by storm. We also need to take the approach of: if you are a major dealer in heroin, ice or other illicit substances, we should be looking at confiscation of your assets—not just some of them—and ploughing them back into rehabilitation services, because they are so cash-strapped as it is.

I have met with the parents of young people in the grip of this addiction and with the youngsters themselves. These desperate parents can only watch, seemingly powerless to intervene, as their son or daughter descends into a living hell. Sometimes it is the children who approach me about their parent who has a serious problem with ice. Time and again, in speaking to families, the problem of inadequate drug rehabilitation comes up as a key problem—both inadequate in meeting the high demand for treatment, causing long waiting periods, and inadequate in that Australia relies almost entirely on a voluntary drug rehabilitation model, which is not a bad thing but we need, in exceptional circumstances, to look at mandatory rehabilitation.

In the face of ice, which appears to be the most addictive drug yet devised, which multiplies the risk of psychotic illness by 11 times, which changes the personality of the user so that their closest family no longer recognise them, how can we only offer voluntary rehabilitation? If you are in the grip of that addiction, you are not in the position to make an informed, free choice as to what needs to be done. Are we, as a nation, going to stand by coldly and watch as young people and adults, unwilling to enter rehab because they are gripped by addiction and paranoia, descend into crime, violence and potentially an early grave? Even more tragically, they can injure and potentially kill others.

I have been very grateful for the work of the Children's Court magistrate from Victoria Jennifer Bowles, who as a Churchill fellow last year examined the system of mandatory drug rehabilitation in Sweden. I commend her report to my colleagues. As a magistrate for 17 years, she has confronted, head-on, the broken lives of many young people with drug problems. Her report, What can be done?, is necessary reading amongst legislators, policymakers and anyone who cares about this problem. Magistrate Bowles says that the key problem in Australia in trying to respond to these desperate young people is the inability to keep them engaged in treatment and recovery due to the voluntary nature of the system, because it is so easy to be pulled out of that. She highlights that, last calendar year, the Children's Court issued 2,625 search warrants for missing children under state care—a cohort hugely at risk of drug abuse and mental health problems.

She quotes from an affidavit for one such search warrant of a 13-year-old girl, whom we will call 'Annie', who walked out of residential care. The girl was an ice user with sexualised behaviours—we are talking about a 13-year-old. She was raised by her mother, who had recently passed away, and was estranged from her father who had recently come out of prison.

The affidavit said in the Children' Court:

Annie is frequently reported to be in the company of an older negative peer group and is reported to engage in substance abuse, primarily ice.

After previously going missing for five weeks, Annie eventually came back and her behaviour was much worse. The affidavit tells us why:

Annie is reported to engage in sexualised behaviours such as sexting, the recipients of which have at times included adult males who have reciprocated.

No wonder Magistrate Bowle's asks the question: what can be done? Because the current system lacks the ability to respond to people like Annie—people who are a danger to themselves.

Looking around the nation, the Parliamentary Library has advised that the precise number of drug and alcohol treatment beds for young people is very difficult to determine. From the sketchy information available, it is fair to say that there are very few mandatory drug rehabilitation beds available in Australia. There are two programs for adults in New South Wales, one of which is a correctional facility, which is not the way to go forward on this. Do not criminalise this. Do not treat is as though people are criminals. They need help. It is a health issue. The Northern Territory program is in response to alcohol abuse.

We are not going down the right path on this. While mandatory rehabilitation is not appropriate in a range of circumstances, it is the last best hope for many young people, as Magistrate Bowles reports. And I believe the lessons from Magistrate Bowles' report can and should also be applied to adults—as also happens in Sweden.

Under the heading 'Dealing with the crystal methamphetamine (ice) scourge—urgent need for a change of approach,' this very experienced magistrate says:

The lifestyles these young people are living mean that the chances (that) they will attend or regularly attend treatment are minimal. Given the complex reasons for their drug and alcohol/mental health issues, the treatment model of receiving one session with a psychologist or counsellor for perhaps one hour each week and then returning to their lives is deeply flawed.

The magistrate says:

There is an urgent need to look at these issues and to consider what can be done to intervene and break the existing, dire situation.

The key word there is 'intervene', because that is what is necessary for many young people in the grip of ice. The contrast between Australia and the approach of Sweden could not be starker. It is a last resort in Sweden, but the fact that it exists there and you know that, if nothing else works, you can actually have that option, I think plays a major cultural role in dealing with the drug problem there.

Sweden has 491 secure beds for adolescents—a rate of 51 beds per million of Sweden's population. All of these young people receive therapeutic treatment as required. It is intensive. It is well funded. It works. By comparison, Magistrate Bowles says Victoria has only 20 secure beds for adolescents, not including youth justice beds—a rate of 3.5 beds per million of population. So Sweden has fourteen times the capacity for mandatory treatment of young people than Victoria, per capita.

But Magistrate Bowles says the Victorian system limits stays to 21 days—and I think in other states it is even worse than that—setting up a revolving door of young people who cannot stay long enough to receive effective therapeutic treatment. Sweden's secure rehabilitation homes—or SiS for short—are used as a last resort. They account for only three per cent of state intervention in the lives of young people after the failure of foster care and residential care to curb or control substance abuse and psychological issues. But they are there. They are secure. It is well funded. It is treated as a health problem.

The key finding from Sweden appears to be that mandatory rehabilitation does work for a cohort of young people where there is no other choice. It gives a safety net to give them the help that they need. Expert practitioners told Magistrate Bowles that, without mandatory treatment, the outcomes for these young people would be much, much worse. It is my understanding that the level of substance abuse, particularly for ice, heroin and a range of other drugs in Sweden, is dramatically lower than it is here in Australia.

We must, must do much more to help those addicted to the scourge of ice. As a community, we must go down a new path. (Time expired)

Senate adjourned at 19:49